Murray laments lack of practice

14 April 2012

Andy Murray admitted the effects of an ankle injury took their toll despite his victory over American Paul Goldstein in the second round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.

Murray showed few signs of the ankle and hip injuries which contributed to his semi-final loss in Indian Wells last week as he recorded a straight-sets victory.

But he admitted a lack of practice combined with the after-effects of his injury hampered his performance.

"He fights hard in all his matches," Murray said of his opponent.

"I think it was more through my poor play that I let him back into the match with 5-4 in the second. I think I served three double-faults in that game and went for a couple of shots that weren't really on.

"But I did well to hang in in the tie-break, and it's quite difficult when you haven't hit that many balls the last few days."

The reason for Murray's rustiness was an ankle injury he suffered in a quarter-final win over Germany's Tommy Haas at Indian Wells.

"I was pretty out of breath, to be honest," he said. "I was pretty tired. You know, I only hit about 2 1/2 hours over the last six days, and the conditions here are completely different to Indian Wells."

Murray cruised through the first set, breaking Goldstein in the opening game and twice more as he took it 6-2.

It looked like being a similar story in the second as Murray cruised into a 4-2 lead and served for the match at 5-4, but he was unable to convert several match points as Goldstein broke back and eventually forced a tie-break.

Murray was not to be denied however and, despite struggling with an inconsistent first serve, took the tie-break 7-4 to book his place in the third round.

Murray will now have to face another American in Robert Kendrick, who took 18th seed Lleyton Hewitt's place in the draw after the Australian withdrew with a lower back injury.

Kendrick posted a 6-4 6-4 triumph over Dutch player Raemon Sluiter also yesterday.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in